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Capitalism 2 Balance Mod

2013-03-03

As mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to make a mod for Capitalism 2 to rebalance it and fix various bugs. I did that today.

Main features

Rebalances profit margins: In the original game, the average profit margin for a product was over 14000% and went up to a million percent. At the same time, most semifinished products had negative profit margins (including citric acid, coconut oil, corn syrup, dyestuff, flour, linen, polyester, textiles, and wheat germ oil). I've rebalanced them somewhat so that you can make a profit selling any product, but the average profit margin is much lower -- "only" about 150%, with a median of about 67%. I would like to eventually get it down to 30-40%, but that requires more extensive changes.

Rebalances demand: The original game balanced the demand for products so that every product or product group had roughly the same revenue ceiling. This resulted in people buying ridiculously large or small numbers of some products, and overall people bought too little. I tried to make the demand a bit more realistic. Overall, people buy a lot more things, which helps counteract the reduced profit margins, and some fields are now much more lucrative than others.

Reduces freight costs: One of the main complaints about the original game was that freight costs were so high that it was pointless to try to ship products between cities, and even within the same city you may not be able to make much of a profit unless you placed your production buildings close to your retail stores. On average I cut freight costs in half, but I also made them somewhat more realistic by basing them on the approximate weight and size of the objects, so the freight costs for a few items are actually higher than before. But overall, it's now worthwhile to ship some finished products to other cities.

Warehouses: I converted one of the factory types into a warehouse. Now there are 1 small, 2 medium, and 2 large factories, and the warehouse. Essentially, it's a building with a large amount of internal space and low monthly overhead. You can use it to merge product flow from multiple sources or buffer goods from unreliable manufacturers. However, it's not possible to prevent you from manufacturing things there, so only the honor system prevents you from using it as a large, cheap factory; the AI has no honor and uses warehouses for manufacturing, but I figure it's not a problem because the AI is so weak that it needs all the help it can get. :-P

Increased costs for extractive industries: I've greatly increased the setup and monthly costs for logging camps, mines, and oil wells. Nonetheless, those industries are still overpowered. In fact, they may be even more profitable now due to the reduced freight costs, but you'd better make sure you have some demand lined up before setting up shop now.

Increased competition and activity: This wasn't exactly planned, but due to the changes I made, the AI seems to be a lot more active. There's a lot more competition and a lot more products available from the AI. The AI also seems to buy products that you produce more often. Perhaps it's due to the fact that semifinished products are now profitable, so the AI produces them and is then able to produce the finished products that they enable. Additionally, the reduced freight costs probably allow the AI to be more flexible in its operations.

Executives are cheaper to hire: In the original game, executives often demanded a salary higher than the company's entire annual profit! They were worse than useless. I've decreased their salary demands by about 80%, and now it may actually be worthwhile to hire some executives.

Minor features / miscellaneous changes

R&D buildings and advertising cost a bit more. $5,000 is really too cheap to set up an advertising unit, so I raised it to $50,000.

I made the AI value oil and chemical minerals a bit more, because they enable the creation of many other products even if they're not that profitable in their own right.

On a few products, such as computers, I made people care more about the quality of the product than about the brand. I guess that's just my personal bias. :-)

Known problems

The game is still too easy. I need to reduce profit margins more and find a way to make extractive industries more expensive without discouraging the AI from entering the market.

The mod hasn't been extensively tested. I've played a couple games, and it seems like a real improvement, but I certainly haven't tried out all the industries and products.

Download and installation instructions

You can download the mod (version 0.91) here. The mod was built with version 1.03 of Capitalism 2 but should work with 1.05 as well. (I tested it.)

Hi, Jared. It's definitely possible to mod the Mac version of the game. In fact, there's a good chance that the 1STD.SET file is identical with the PC version, in which case you could apply my rebalance mod using installation method #1. (If it doesn't work, just restore the backup.)
As for creating your own mods, my mod kit does not work on a Mac, unfortunately, but information needed to edit the 1STD.SET file can be found in my previous post, titled "Reverse Engineering Capitalism 2".

Can you make a mod editor for Caplab ? This one does not seem to work on the Caplab 1STD.SET file. I think some of the database format is different.

an anonymous CapLab Lover

RE: CapLab2013-09-06 12:54AM

The database tables are definitely different, but more importantly, the CapLab development team has not properly maintained the database, so the data in the database seems to violate the schema. (The game still works because it ignores the schema and just hardcodes the offsets into the rows.)

It would be possible to develop an editor for CapLab but because of the schema/data mismatch it would have to work completely differently, and would be fragile. The main reason I can't (easily) do it, though, is that I don't have a copy of CapLab. :-P

hi adam.. can u help me.. i have a problem in capitalism 2 when i keep playing it around 70 years and more the city population keep decrease to be half.. can you made something so the population can increasing

Hi rizki, usually city populations decrease if you have the complex economic model enabled and there is a prolonged recession. There may be other reasons population may decrease but in any case the parameters to control it are not exposed in any data file but are hardcoded within the game. That means it would be very difficult to mod, unfortunately.

There is a 10 cities mod some one know where to download it and install ?

an anonymous Kamil

RE: mod2014-02-22 10:58PM

Hi Kamil, I was able to increase the number of cities up to 7 or 8 by editing the 9th byte of the CONFIG.DAT file and starting a new custom game (without changing any settings), but unfortunately that made the game unstable. (After playing for a short time, the game crashed.)

If you just want to use the mod, you can simply overwrite the 1STD.SET file with the one from the mod package.

Running the mod tool is only for the case that you want to change the way the mod works or create your own mod. In that case you'd need to use the command prompt. You'd need to change to the gameset directory and run either dbmod import 1std.set yourdata.xlsx or dbmod export 1std.set yourdata.xlsx depending on whether you want to apply new values to the game database or extract the current values from the game database, respectively.

If you're unfamiliar with the command prompt, I recommend searching online for some tutorials on using the command prompt to do those things.

Hi I figured it out thanks for the fantastic mod! one question I know its not realistic but is it possible to do free freight charges? thanks for your help

an anonymous tom

RE: error2015-01-21 06:11PM

For free freight charges, try setting all the values in the FREIGHT column in the ITEM table to zero and importing the new values into the database with the dbmod tool. I haven't tested it, but I believe that will work.

Can you be more specific? How did it not work? Did the game crash or give bizarre values? Did the freight charges remain unchanged?

If the game crashed, try changing the freight values to 1 instead of 0. This will set freight charges to be very low. If the freight charges remained unchanged, then you probably didn't import the new values into the database correctly.

The freight charges didn't change game didn't crash. I'm using command prompt to import it into the 1STD.SET.

an anonymous tom

RE: freight charges2015-01-23 06:12PM

Well, can you change anything in the database? For instance, if you change a product name (e.g. "Yogurt" to "Gogurt"), does the new name show up in-game? If so, then are you sure you're editing the right column? There are a couple different freight-related columns. The one that matters is called "FREIGHT" (not "FREIGHT/100KM", for instance). If not, then I don't think you're importing the data correctly, in which case what is the exact command you're entering, and in which directory are you running it (i.e. what is the output of the "cd" command)?

I figured out the problem if I start a new game it will have 0.01 freight charges. Thanks for your help

an anonymous tom

Dissable AI2015-04-20 08:08PM

Hey i know it has nothing todo with youre mod directly but is there a way to turn off the AI.
i play with friends but it doesnt make sense as the AI floods the market with products and its more a WE against the KI and not we play against us :-(

an anonymous Misc

RE: Disable AI2015-04-23 06:50PM

There's always a way but unfortunately there's no simple way that I'm aware of. Some significant reverse engineering would have to be done to locate the corresponding code.

But is there no file where the "AI" is inside what i could delte and then would the AI do nothing anymore.Is there a File for the AI?

an anonymous peter

RE: Disable AI2015-05-18 05:50PM

There is no file dedicated solely to controlling the AI. The AI code is inside the .exe file along with all the other game code and it's a difficult job to find which parts of the .exe file relate to the AI. Once those parts are found, they can be disabled pretty easily, but finding them in the first place would probably take a month or two of work.

One possibility that's easier than disabling the AI is editing the file that contains your game settings. It might be possible to manually edit that file to set the number of AI companies below what the UI will allow. For instance, you might be able to reduce it to 1 AI company, or possibly even zero. That possibility would only take a couple of hours to test. But I haven't tried it.

I've installed the mod and noticed that the Warehouse is just a regular factory.

I have this little problem that I have to manually adjust from which factory I want my finished products to be bought, instead of just stockpile-merging all equal products inside the warehouse, and then selling to stores from a single point of sales.

Is there any way to change which products we can buy at the warehouse(or all factories if that is a must)?

Yep. As I wrote above, the warehouse is just a factory with a large amount of internal space and low monthly overhead. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by your question, but it is possible to merge product flow from multiple factories in the warehouse. Just connect multiple purchasing units to one or more inventory units, and then connect the inventory unit(s) to a sales unit. Then your retail stores purchase from the warehouse. Each purchasing unit will need to specify a single source, so if you want to merge products from three factories then you need three purchasing units. There's no easy way to tell a single purchasing unit to buy from multiple sources.

Ahh, I see. Well I guess there's nothing you can do about it by editing the game database. The restriction is almost certainly part of the game itself, and while it's possible to reverse engineer the game executable and modify the game, it's a significant undertaking, probably about 50-100 hours.

Hi, Gustavo. I don't have a function at address 412CD0 in my copy of the game, and a search for the constant 471 didn't locate any code similar to what you posted, so we must be using different versions of the game. Anyway, I'll respond in more detail by email. Please send questions like this to my email since it takes up a lot of space on the page and is unlikely to apply to anyone else.

Hi Mikel. The warehouse is just a type of factory. You can store raw materials and semi-finished products by connecting a purchasing unit to one or more inventory units and connecting those to a sales unit. Unfortunately, it turns out that you can't store finished products there (except finished products that are also inputs for other products), since those can only be bought by a retail outlet...

Is your question related to my balance mod in some way? I don't really understand your question, but I think that's just how the game is...

Hi Nick,

Thank you for your greetings. :-) I'm back in the USA now, but I do wish I could visit Estonia sometimes (when it's not winter)! Too bad we don't have teleportation yet... Anyway, I hope you're well. Take care,

I'm still having negative profits with semifinished products like citric acid and coconut oil. I'm not sure if it worked.

I'm selling citric acid for ~$9, is it normal ? Seaport sells it for ~$0.5.

an anonymous Joe

RE: Negative profits2017-06-15 01:33PM

Hi Joe,

I don't remember exactly what the prices should be like, but it doesn't sound like the patch was fully applied to your game. Did you start a new game after applying it? Some things only take effect after starting a new game...

Hi, Solran. It is possible to increase the reserve of mines, but I suspect it can't be done with the mod kit. The information about raw resources is stored in the RAW table, shown here: http://www.adammil.net/files/112/RAW.html It looks like you can control the resource value, mining speed, maximum number of sites, and mine space.

I guess if you halve the mining speed and double the resource value, you could effectively double the time until a mine is exhaused, but it's not quite the same because it would also double the resource cost to make products from it.